China: Top Leaders Split Over Handling of Security Czar

The attempted defection on 6 February 2012 of former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun has set in motion accelerating changes in the Party hierarchy. His boss and former Chongqing Party head Bo Xilai was sacked on 15 March 2012 and then put under investigation on 10 April 2012. Now, Zhou Yongkang, Bo’s mentor and powerful domestic security Czar, is rumored to be under investigations. He is the chief of the powerful Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC) and a member of Politburo Standing Committee— the apex party body. Zhou Yongkang was unhappy with the decision to remove Bo.

Top leaders had known about Zhou’s crimes for a long time but hesitated to exposing them for fear that revealing their scale would be so shocking to people that it might spell the end of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The source said that Premier Wen Jiabao wanted to expose Zhou’s crimes against Falun Gong, including the widespread use of torture and cases of Falun Gong practitioners being killed for their organs.

The persecution was launched by former Party head Jiang Zemin. The group of people who carried out the persecution were Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Luo Gan (Zhou’s predecessor as head of the PLAC), Zeng Qinghong, (currently head of the National Peoples’ Congress), and other high-ranking Party officials were promoted by Jiang as a reward for the leading roles they played in eradicating Falun Gong.

On 12 April 2012, the Korean paper Chosun Ilbo quoted information leaked from Beijing’s circle of foreign affairs and reported that on the evening of March 19, the Committee for Disciplinary Inspection had begun an investigation of Zhou.

On 10 April 2012, CCTV and People’s Daily reported that Bo was suspended. From 11 April to 13 April 2012 the media launched a campaign against Bo and pushed the message that all must support the central government’s decision over Bo.

On 14 April 2012, the media focus shifted from Bo to Zhau. Many documents exposing Zhou’s crimes have surfaced on the Internet since April 10, including his alleged staging of a car accident that killed his ex-wife. A coup plan in which he acted as the main organizer was revealed on the Internet. It was claimed that this information came from Bo’s wife Gu Kailai to save herself from a death penalty for the death of British businessman Neil Heywood in November 2011.

Jiang Zemin is toothless now and his faction will collapse leaving no one to support Zhou Yongkang.